Community Advocates Criticize Rollback of Community Reinvestment Act Reforms

Randy Benjenk’s commentary was included in an article appearing in The Banker covering U.S. banking regulators’ decisions to backtrack from a long-scheduled update to the Community Reinvestment Act. Randy provides his insight on the decision and what it means for the banking sector.

Regulators’ decisions to ditch the updates “represents a stalemate in the battle over CRA reform, fought over the past decade and spanning multiple presidential administrations”, Randy told The Banker.

According to Randy, the dismantling of the changes proposed in 2023 brings back the flaws of the existing regime. “Because the existing rules give a fair bit of discretion to examiners, there is sometimes a lack of consistency in how the agencies apply the rules to different banks and to the same bank over time,” he said.